News

Kenya Set to Introduce GMO Maize After Public Consultation Period

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Martin Olage,  Mwakilishi,  2025-01-07 20:44:12.
The National Biosafety Authority (NBA) has completed a month-long public consultation regarding the potential market introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) maize, specifically known as BT Maize. This consultation, initiated in mid-December after an official notice on December 6, 2024, gathered feedback from Kenyan citizens as part of its due diligence process. This initiative follows a licensing request made by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (Kalro) and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). The organizations aim to bring BT Maize—developed by Bayer Company and licensed to the TELA Maize project—into the market. This genetically modified maize is engineered to resist pests such as stem borers and fall armyworms, potentially decreasing the reliance on chemical insecticides in agriculture. Historically, Kenya has cultivated genetically modified crops for non-food purposes, including BT Cotton. The NBA has been active in conducting field trials with various GM crops: these include water-efficient maize in Makueni, enhanced maize suited for African agricultural conditions in Kitale, and virus-resistant sweet potatoes and cassava in Kakamega and Thika. Current trials are also evaluating GM potatoes in Nakuru and Kiambu, along with the cultivation of purple gypsophilia flowers in Naivasha. Kalro and AATF advocate that BT Maize presents a vital solution for minimizing crop damage caused by pests. They stress that the maize contains specific genes sourced from Bacillus thuringiensis, effectively targeting particular lepidopteran pests.

A Tiny but Mighty Helper Stops Mosquito Viruses in Their Tracks

Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga,  The Scientist,  2024-12-16 15:37:12.
Luciano Moreira, a vector biologist and the project lead of the World Mosquito Program in Brazil, has always been driven by solving people’s problems. As a kid, he concocted blends of house-cleaning products to eliminate common home pests; in adulthood, Moreira channeled his problem-solving tendencies into finding innovative ways to tackle mosquito-borne pathogens for more than two decades. Now he tests these strategies to ease the burden of diseases that affect millions of people in his home country and around the world.   Moreira worked on approaches to fight agricultural pests during his graduate studies at the Federal University of Viçosa. He focused on tomato leafminers, insects whose larvae feed on leaves and create white, winding trails called mines on their surfaces. Injured leaves tend to drop prematurely, and infested plants may lose most of their leaves, affecting fruit size and yield. By investigating plants that were resilient against leafminers, Moreira and his colleagues identified markers of resistance located on chromosome two of tomato plants. After concluding his graduate studies, he pursued a postdoctoral position at the laboratory of molecular entomologist Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, now an emeritus researcher at John Hopkins University. Jacobs-Lorena and his team were interested in using transgenic mosquitoes to control the transmission of the single-celled parasite Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria. “We did lots of molecular biology, trying to find genes and promoters of the genes that would block Plasmodium inside the mosquitoes,” Moreira said.